28th September 2009
Benefits Agency is the New Informer
Mark Hanson
Under new powers that are included in the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, Department for Work and Pensions staff will be able to ask searching questions of claimants on their past and present drink and drugs use.
This piece of legislation, intended to target benefit claimants who are unable to work due to drink and drug abuse, gives far reaching powers to frontline Jobcentre Plus staff, not only to quiz any claimant about their habits and behaviour, but also to pass that information on to the police and probation services.
Refusal to answer questions will enable the DWP to withhold benefit payments, and if questions are answered, and the Jobcentre Plus staff conclude an addiction problem, failure on the part of the claimant to attend a treatment centre shall also mean they have their benefits removed.
Addiction charities have already spoken out against these proposals on grounds that they are unworkable and ineffective, and considering that imprisonment rarely causes an addict to abstain, benefit withdrawal is unlikely to effect successful rehabilitation but instead cause further crime.
But perhaps the Government understands this, for the proposals make insufficiently trained DWP staff to be informers for the police, as records of questions asked will be shared with any police force in the UK.
It is further evidence that Labour has not shed its “big government” socialist policies even if it has become a convert to capitalist economics, and the wide-ranging powers of increased state surveillance of the vulnerable is of major concern.
It is understandable that the authorities want to protect public money, but again they show that this is to be done at the expense of British traditions and values.
Rabel urges the Lords, as this bill passes through their House, to reject these draconian measures that target and threaten the most vulnerable in our society.
